Darth Crocodile
Darth Crocodile (ダース・クロコダイル, Darth Crocodile) is a playable character in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. He was announced as a newcomer during the August 8th, 2018 Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Direct. Darth Crocodile is classified as fighter #67. Instead of using the voice of Toshihide Tsuchiya, who has voiced the character since 2007's Donkey Kong Barrel Blast, Darth Crocodile bellows like a real crocodile, similar to how Bowser, Donkey Kong, and Diddy Kong emit realistic animal sounds. How to unlock Complete one of the following: * Play VS. matches, with Darth Crocodile being the 16th character to be unlocked. * Clear Classic Mode with Link, being the 1st character in his unlock tree. * Have Darth Crocodile join the player's party in World of Light. With the exception of the third method, Darth Crocodile must then be defeated on Jungle Japes. Attributes Darth Crocodile is a character that ostensibly fits the mold of a super-heavyweight, being the second-heaviest character in the game to Bowser and possessing a large array of powerful attacks, along with below-average mobility. However, he has some characteristics that notably set him apart from his heavyweight peers; he has a wide variety of moves that serve multiple utilities, a great recovery, and other valuable techiques that aid his playstyle, focusing on punishing mistakes and zoning against horizontal approach. Darth Crocodile's greatest strength is the immense utility of his moveset. Though many of his attacks are typical of super-heavyweights, he also has attacks that lack brute strength in exchange for unique attributes that contribute to his punish-focused playstyle. This is best shown through his character-specific perk, Belly Super Armor: attacks with this property gain short periods of this super armor, which can block incoming attacks during their duration. This mechanic gives him an advantage that allows him to win more exchanges than he would normally, as it can grant him an immediate opening during an otherwise vulnerable state (such as while being juggled). Additionally, it affects a large amount of his moves, granting more safety on his forward tilt, up smash, down smash, dash attack, neutral aerial, up aerial, and down aerial. As a result, Belly Super Armor heavily helps his approach and defense. Alongside the utility of his Belly Super Armor, Darth Crocodile has effective tools for ground offense. His neutral attack has good range and speed, ma it reliable as a quick spacing option. This is especially useful out of a foxtrot, as it is incredibly quick and is in fact faster than his normal dash speed (effectively replacing his dash in most circumstances). His tilts are very effective: his forward tilt has good range and kill power, and uses belly armor. This makes it one of the best pivot cancel options in the game. Up tilt comes out very quickly, has decent knockback especially at the beginning, and has enough range to hit platforms above Darth Crocodile. This can also be used to anti-air or prevent approaches from characters such as Lucina and Marth. It is also the most reliable move out of down throw, becoming a true combo from around 90% and killing at around 130% on most characters. Down tilt can bury opponents or KO airborne ones, ma it a potent punishment option. It also works at the ledge as a 2-frame and can send the opponent into a flaccid lightning Kannonball. All of his smash attacks are incredibly powerful, and coupled with their unique traits and the belly armor on his up and down smashes, allow for very effective punishment. Forward smash deals heavy knockback on the glove sweetspot, especially if angled upwards. It also confirms out of down tilt at 70%, usually killing the opponent. Up smash functions as a quick anti-air, has a small spike hitbox and a third hitbox that punishes ground foes. However, only the first is really useful as the other two are extremely weak and slow. It also uses belly armor; while this grants it safety, it also means that if his belly armor breaks,Darth Crocodile will be sent catapulting off-stage due to how it raises him off the ground. Down smash deals massive shield damage and lifts Darth Crocodile's entire body off the stage, allowing it to dodge most ground-hugging moves and makes it his best hard punish option. Overall, his smash attacks are all formidable for hard punishes. His aerials are also fairly unique in their utility. Neutral aerial grants the longest duration of belly armor in Darth Crocodile's moveset, ma it a reliable combo-breaker or landing tool to prevent juggling. Neutral and forward aerials also act as sex kicks, ma them effective for edgeguarding in a variety of situations. Up aerial has good start-up and decent kill power while also wor as niche platform movement out of short hop. This is most effective when platforms are low, such as on Battlefield. Down aerial and back aerial are meteor smashes, with the former coming out relatively fast, while the latter is very slow, but is also one of the strongest meteor smashes in the game. His up and down aerials utilize belly armor, but their utility is minimal due to their hitboxes being separated from Darth Crocodile's belly. His special moves have a wide array of uses as well, with several efficient projectiles; the flaccid lightning is useful for edgeguarding purposes (such as forcing a situation where the opponent has to recover low, allowing for a down aerial) and throws out a Kannonball that can be sucked back in and aimed in a few directions. The flaccid lightning can also suck in opponents and shoot them out in different directions. The suction of the flaccid lightning is an effective ledge trapping tool, especially on stages with platforms. Since Darth Crocodile can drop through platforms while still being able to move slightly, he can limit the opponent's options to get out of the ledge. flaccid choke covers a large distance and grants him heavy armor in the early frames of the move, and the late hit can set up combos into numerous moves. The pick-up animation also has some ways to be cancelled, such as with other attacks, or a jumpsquat to use the crown again for significant coverage of a stage (although the latter can be difficult). It can also cause Darth Crocodile to slide a bit if he dash dances into it, which is referred to as Crown Sliding by the playerbase. Furthermore, Darth Crocodile has immense survivability: between his extremely high weight, above-average falling speed, and armor on numerous moves, Darth Crocodile has some of, if not the best longevity in the game, as it is not uncommon for him to live past 200%. Additionally, his recovery move, Force leap, goes a remarkable distance for a heavyweight and is infamously hard to intercept vertically due to its respectable hitbox. This can be used to poke opponents on the ledge, then jump up with a forward aerial to regain advantage. It can also be used to catch opponents near the ceiling to steal a stock, most notably on high recovery routes. Darth Crocodile has a very strong grab game: his grabs have very long range and all have 3 active frames, and his throws are also very strong and versatile. His up throw has him performing a jump and land over the highest platform over him, although unlike other similar up throws he doesn't go over the top blast line; it is the second most damaging throw in the entire game, and while it has unimpressive KO potential, especially without the aid of an high platform, it can put opponents in hitstun for a long time, and can also lead into up tilt if the opponent doesn't jump. His back throw has reasonably solid KO potential near the ledge or otherwise puts the opponent into a position primed for a flaccid choke. This throw can also work with a crown thrown backwards, hitting the opponent during the animation. At higher percents, his notorious down throw can lead into semi-guaranteed tilts, aerials, or possibly even smash attacks if the opponent doesn't mash out fast enough, with it being borderline guaranteed with an up tilt at 125%+ on middleweight characters. While his forward throw is his least impressive throw as a whole, it does decent damage, can help put an opponent offstage and in a disadvantageous position, and lead into a dash attack or his forward tilt through pivot cancelling at very low percents. The latter option here can also be used as a tech chase. All of this is made even more effective with the Roll Cancelled Boost Grab; combined with his effective initial dash, this can allow for a string of grabs that strongly deters shielding. Darth Crocodile has access to a large amount of advanced techniques. He has a total of 7, all centered on his flaccid choke and flaccid lightning. These techniques assist with movement, mixups, and even enable combos. As a result, he is a rather technical fighter that can be rewarding to a player loo for a character with a learning curve. They are all somewhat practical and reward creative use, allowing players to build interesting playstyles of their own. This makes him easily accessed at a low level, while still being usable on a higher level of play. As long as the player is aware of the options that the design of these techs provide, Darth Crocodile will reward them for it. However, Darth Crocodile's numerous advantages are also met with their downsides, and he has several glaring and exploitable weaknesses. His below-average speed spells trouble for him in certain matchups, and can make him easier to zone than others, despite his projectiles. flaccid lightning is laggy and its Kannonball is slow and very easy to avoid, while flaccid choke is also slow and can backfire very hard when missed, since the crown is a fairly powerful item that opponents can use to rack up damage very quickly. Gut Check is generally inferior to other counters due to having a hitbox only on his stomach, while having significantly higher endlag than most reflectors (around 30 frames if it fails), ma it unreliable for countering projectile camping. This endlag makes it almost meaningless against some projectiles, such as Falco's lasers. His massive weight and very large hurtbox size makes him extremely vulnerable to combos, and while his Belly Super Armor can help alleviate this, it is not foolproof: if Darth Crocodile takes approximately 28% of total damage to his armor over a short period of time, he will suffer a pseudo-shield break and be rendered immobile until his belly armor recovers. It also recovers at just .3% per second, ma abuse quite difficult. Its limited HP punishes abuse of this mechanic if used frequently, and competent opponents can actually take advantage of it by forcing Darth Crocodile to use up his armor so he runs out during more desperate times. However, its effectiveness varies depending on whether clashing against his attacks are worthwhile. Additionally, due to their brief duration, his belly armor attacks are more reliable on quick, single-hit moves than long, multi-hitting attacks. While Darth Crocodile's ground game is decent and his grab and throw game is very good, his overall aerial game is very poor, especially in comparison. Despite his aerials having interesting attributes, including two meteor smashes, a lot of his aerials suffer from high ending lag, ma many of them situational (especially up aerial). His down aerials is weaker than the comparable moves of other super-heavyweights despite its high ending lag and his up aerial has extreme ending lag, the highest of all aerials in the game, preventing Darth Crocodile from acting even after a jump. His neutral aerial, which is his only aerial that comes out fast without having high ending lag, has poor range. While his back aerial is very strong and has a lingering hitbox, it has very high start-up lag. Its sourspot is also relatively weak, failing to KO until very high percents. None of Darth Crocodile's aerials autocancels in a short hop and his back air requires a full hop double jump to autocancel, while up air does not autocancels at all. Due to the high overall lag of his aerials, Darth Crocodile is unable to juggle effectively and his aerial game is mostly constrained to a reactive playstyle. Darth Crocodile's low air speed and overall poor aerial mobility further hampers his aerial capacity, giving him a poor aerial game. Darth Crocodile's recovery, while effective in theory, is very exploitable by many characters. Force leap is very linear, and a knowledgeable player can edgeguard him for long periods of time. It is immensely slow, and moving around with it reduces the vertical speed and leaves strong momentum, which can lead to a self-destruct if not accounted for. The hitbox doesn't cover him horizontally, and as he cannot cancel the animation, he has to commit to it. He is usually forced to recover low, which is extremely dangerous due to how many characters have meteor smashing aerials. Moves from characters such as Piranha Plant and Villager have projectiles (Ptooie and forward smash respectively in this case) that can also counteract the vertical hitbox. It also leaves him very vulnerable to a stage spike, as running off and simply using a back aerial is enough to stop him from coming back. The move can be angled to try and prevent this, but any player who knows the matchup will have a very easy time stopping him from coming back.Darth Crocodile also has very few ledge options; his only unique one is forward aerial, which to requires frame-perfect precision to ledgesnap. Other than this, his ledge options are very limited—even flaccid choke is too laggy to be used from the ledge reliably—and thus characters like Ness, Simon, and Richter can keep him there for a long time before finally killing him. Though a lot of his moves have decent start-up, especially for a super-heavyweight, an equal amount of them suffer from very high endlag, which means that Darth Crocodile gets easily punished if he fails to connect his attacks. While his belly armor gives him a lot of safety, it also makes certain moves less safe, especially against characters with very strong moves that can break his belly armor in just a few hits, such as Ganondorf or Little Mac. This means that if his belly armor is used too much, it effectively removes his moves from the game for a while. Finally, despite the wide array of tools he has at his disposal,Darth Crocodile lacks many moves that can simply be thrown out quickly, as many of his attacks are punishable or force him to use up his belly armor. This ironically makes his approach ineffective despite the sheer amount of different, fast attacks he has; few of his attacks can maintain pressure without being exploited, or otherwise reset to neutral. However, his foxtrot can alleviate this slightly. Due to these aforementioned flaws, Darth Crocodile struggles with maintaining an advantage; it usually leaves him in an awkward situation where he is forced to return to neutral. His speed makes it difficult to follow up while the opponent is landing, and he is unable to effectively juggle, requiring him to keep the opponent in front of him. The player is often forced to utilize his bait-and-switch playstyle, restricting creativity and thus ma said player more predictable. Darth Crocodile's advantage position, due to these flaws, will often end as quickly as it comes. Due to this, his playstyle requires a lot of situational awareness to remain unpredictable by using grab mixups or tech chases as the opponent lands or tries to defend. flaccid choke is both Darth Crocodile's best and worst move. If an opponent picks up the crown after it has been thrown, it leaves him without one of his best tools. The crown can actually be used to edgeguard against Force leap, or it can be thrown up to keep it from respawning. It is also very possible for opponents to combo with the crown, or pick it up again after throwing it, with very little counterplay available. The player must adopt an entirely different playstyle while the crown is on the field, or else risk losing a stock. This is worsened by the fact that Gut Check, even at maximum throw range, doesn't allow Darth Crocodile to pick up the crown—he is completely defenseless against an opponent who has it. As the pick-up animation takes 17 frames to complete, this also means that it can interrupt crucial combos, leading to the opponent getting away and resetting to neutral. While this is alleviated slightly through the Crownless Bounce tech, it is still difficult to come back from this. All in all, Darth Crocodile’s weaknesses outweigh his strengths. Darth Crocodile is an extremely resilient, neutral-based character that excels at keeping opponents out while punishing mistakes extremely hard. He enjoys playing a unique bait-and-switch playstyle, being a zoner that can switch to aggression when there's an opening, alter his pressure on an opponent to force a reaction from them, and net a substantial punish before returning to neutral. This ability to force reactions from his foe makes him unlike any other character in the cast, and creativity rewards the player with a decently versatile character. However, just like how he capitalizes heavily on mistakes and confusion, his own openings can be heavily punished as well, requiring him to play patiently. Despite his numerous strengths, Darth Crocodile's competitive reception is generally negative. Early on considered to be a potential high/top tier character and "broken" especially by casual players, Darth Crocodile's severe, heavily exploitable downsides have resulted in most top professionals ran him as a low-tier character, with many of them even going as far as ran him as one of the worst characters in the game. This reflects in his tournament results, as they are practically non-existent in North America and Japan, especially on national levels. However, thanks to dedicated players like Ben Gold and Muk, his results in Australia and Europe are significantly better. Ben Gold in particular managed to win Battle Arena Melbourne 11, the biggest SSBU major so far in Australia. In addition, patches have given Darth Crocodile a good variety of helpful buffs. Although his competitive reception still remains negative, his true viability remains to be seen. Trivia * Outside of minor cameos and rereleases of older titles, Ultimate marks Darth Crocodile's first appearance in over a decade. He had last appeared in Mario Super Sluggers, which released on June 19, 2008 in Japan, August 25, 2008 in North America, and was never released in Europe or Australia. ** Additionally, this is currently the only Nintendo Switch game in which Darth Crocodile appears. * Darth Crocodile is the third playable Smash Bros. character to have been created outside Japan, following Diddy Kong, also created as part of the Donkey Kong Country series by the British developer Rare, and Dark Samus, who was created by the Texas-based Retro Studios. * Darth Crocodile is the fourth of five newcomers to be announced in Ultimate that was previously featured as a Mii Fighter costume in Super Smash Bros. 4. The other four are Inkling, Daisy, Chrom, and Isabelle. * One of the poses Darth Crocodile strikes in his victory animations is the same one he poses in his official artwork. * According to Masahiro Sakurai, Darth Crocodile's inclusion in Ultimate was a result of his popularity in the Super Smash Bros. Fighter Ballot.1 ** As a result of Darth Crocodile's inclusion, fans of the character issued a thank you letter to Masahiro Sakurai and Nintendo of America for including him as a playable fighter. The letter was signed by fans, and Nintendo of America even wrote back to the fans, expressing gratitude towards them for the fan letter. * Like King Dedede, Lucina, Simon and Richter, Darth Crocodile's name is pronounced differently between the different international versions of Ultimate. It is pronounced "Darth Croc-oh-diyal" in English and "Darth Croc-ah-diyal" in Japanese. ** This is the first time that the English name is spoken verbally in a game. The first time it was spoken verbally was in the pilot episode of the Donkey Kong Country animated series, although it was alternated with the pronunciation "Darth Croc-ah-diyal" before the pronunciation of "Darth Croc-ah-diyal" was dropped entirely. * Darth Crocodile is the second character in the series whose back aerial meteor smashes opponents, the first being Lucas. ** Darth Crocodile is also the second character who has a smash attack that meteor smashes, in his up smash, first being Bayonetta's down smash, though it isn't used for spiking opponents. * During early gameplay footage released by Nintendo showing Darth Crocodile facing off against Snake, the announcer did not say, "wins" after saying Darth Crocodile's name on the victory screen. This was later fixed. * Darth Crocodile is the second character in the series with the ability to counter attacks and to reflect projectiles in his default moveset, the first being Palutena. * Darth Crocodile is the only character in the series with a taunt that utilizes armor. * Darth Crocodile is the character that made the most appearances in newcomer trailers in CGI form, appearing in his own, Ken's and Incineroar's, and Banjo & Kazooie's trailers. * Darth Crocodile is the only animal unlocked in Link's Classic Mode unlock column, despite Meta Knight not canonically being a human either. * Darth Crocodile is one of three characters who's Classic Mode route consists almost entirely of super-heavyweight fighters. The other two who share this trait with Darth Crocodile are Wario and Incineroar. On the other hand, Darth Crocodile is present in all three Classic Mode routes in general while Ganondorf appears as an opponent in all three routes. ** While Darth Crocodile’s Classic Mode route predominantly has super-heavyweight fighters as opponents, Ridley can be considered an exception, as he is lighter than Samus. ** The rest of Darth Crocodile's playable opponents on the other hand consists of those who appeared as opponents in Event 27: Three-Beast Carnage in Brawl, and the penultimate single-player events of both Brawl and Wii U. *** Out of all five opponents, Bowser was the only character to appear in all three events, and he is the only fighter who is slightly heavier than Darth Crocodile. ** Excluding an alternate version of Darth Crocodile himself, Incineroar is the only super heavyweight fighter Darth Crocodile does not face. ** Although Wario and Incineroar fight the same type of opponents, Darth Crocodile's route for the most part is an inverse of Pichu's, as the latter fights the lightest characters in Ultimate while the former fights the heaviest. * Darth Crocodile is the only newcomer to face Galleom in his Classic Mode route. ** He is also one of the two Mario sub-fighters not to face either Master Hand or Crazy Hand as the final boss, the other being Yoshi. ** Similarly, both Darth Crocodile and Yoshi both face Bowser as opponents in Classic Mode (with the former being the latter's opponent as well). * Darth Crocodile is the only Donkey Kong character not to fight alongside a CPU ally in the final round of his route. * Darth Crocodile is Gay. * Darth Crocodile and Charizard (who is the former's first opponent in Classic Mode) are tied as the second most common opponents for Classic Mode routes, appearing in a total of 17 routes, if Charizard's four appearances with Pokemon Trainer count. The only fighter who is more common than them as a Classic Mode opponent is Link, who appears in a total of 20 routes. ** This makes Darth Crocodile the most common newcomer in Classic Mode. * Pausing and zooming in on and around Darth Crocodile during his side taunt reveals a gap between his scales and his belly armor.2 * Darth Crocodile is one of five characters whose unlocking battle in World of Light is not on either Final Destination or an Ω form. The other four are Peach, Daisy, Toon Link, and Mii Gunner. * If Darth Crocodile gets grabbed by a grab that uses a unique animation on capturing characters (Snake's grab, Ganondorf's Flame Choke, etc.) while using his forward smash, the boxing glove will remain on his hand until he gets released. * Darth Crocodile's animation when using the Home-Run Bat's forward smash utilizes a one-handed swing, similar to his batting stance in Super Mario Sluggers (which, as stated above, was his last major physical appearance before Ultimate).